A little boy who wants to shine my feet. . .

Well, I'm feeling more like myself today. I'm still taking an easy on the old stomach and not giving it too much to do. It appears to not like that too much as I've been hungry a lot of the day. "What? You can't exist on some soda crackers and a half bowl of soup?"

We'll go find some nice vegetarian food for dinner and see how it copes with that.

On to telling about our vacation adventure from our vacation.

We decided to take a week-end trip to Panajachel which is where Lake Atitlan is. The school got us 2 nights at a nice, but not too nice, hotel and transfers on a shuttle both ways with a stop on Sunday at the market at Chichicastenango. All for $110/each. Pretty good deal.

The adventure starts with the trip to Pana. A full van picks us up at school. There are 9 people already in the back, so Eddie and I get to sit up front with the driver. Oh, great! We're crammed in like sardines, but at least we can get to the seat belts and they actually work. This is a Good Thing as the drivers in Guatemala are crazy! Passing into oncoming traffic, who, fortunately either slow down or get over in the breakdown lane, when there is a breakdown lane. Passing on hills and around curves. Tailgating. OMG! More than once or twice, I buried my head in my hands convinced we were all going to die.

Understand, too, Guatemala is very, very hilly. And I'm not talking hilly like around Central Kentucky which are really more rolling. I'm talking hilly like Eastern KY and W. VA. These are serious hills we are going up and down. Sometimes there are guardrails and sometimes there are not. What there are, are steep drop-offs into nothingness. Which is where I was convinced we were going to end up.

But it was fine........we arrive in Pana and while we were suppose to get taken directly to our hotel, our driver had other plans. He pulls up at a hotel just inside the town of Pana and tells everyone to get out. This is where he is leaving us. Even tho' we keep saying the name of our hotel. We manage to get a tuk-tuk (more on those later) and he takes us right over to the hotel. So, no problemo, except we spend more money on transportation that was already supposed to be paid for.

The other problem at the moment was the fact that it was COLD! I hadn't thought to bring my jacket. Hey, it's the tropics, right. No one told me that the rainy season also means the chilly season. I figured, sure, it'll rain, but it'll be a warm rain. WRONG! I'm freezing! Not only that, I hadn't brought any of the right clothes. No long sleeves, only 1 pair of long pants.

The next order of business then becomes looking for a jacket or a long sleeve shirt. That becomes an interesting exercise as clothes in Guate are not made for people of my size. I finally find a fairly heavy natural dyed wool jacket for a very reasonable $50. It wouldn't have been my 1st choice, but I was cold and not really into comparison shopping.

We get that taken care of, we go see the lake. (Ok, actually we go see the lake then I decide I can't stand walking around without something warmer to wear.) And we stroll the main street looking at our choices for dinner, which are wide and varied. Everything from food off of carts, (I don't even like doing that at home) to a very expensive, obviously best place in town. We chose something in between. My main criteria was reasonably priced food and a bar. I needed a drink after the day's adventures. We have already gotten spoiled by the prices in Antigua and have figured out that Pana is charging resort prices. Granted, resort prices in Guate are not what they are in the States but it was obviously several quetzals more than in Antigua. We also figured out that the closer you got to the lake, the higher the prices. We mostly ate at the other end of the street.

We eat. We look some more. We go back to the hotel, which is very nice. (I'll be posting more pics soon, I promise) Very tropical looking with natural wood everywhere and a lanai all the rooms open onto. It rained some more that night (surprise) but the sound of the rain hitting the roof was very cozy and made for good sleeping. The room was spartan but clean and Eddie said the shower had a good supply of hot water.

The next morning I'm still in a bit of a grumpy mood. (No, you Mel! I don't believe it.) I don't have the right clothes with me. It's raining, STILL. It's cold, STILL. And the internet cafe right at the entrance to the hotel is having connectivity problems. SIGH! We go find a place further down the street, but they won't let us use our own machines, so we go farther down the street and find one that does. We both get online for about an hour. I go out to the Well and bitch to some of my online friends about what a sucky time I'm having so far.

Since it's still raining when we get done, we decide to get a massage at a place that advertises $25/hour massage, which is less than half what we pay in the States. While we're doing that, the rain stops. YEAAAAA! I feel pretty good afterward *and* it's not raining. Things are looking up.

We find a Uraguayan restaurant for lunch, which was more interesting sounding than in actuality, but OK ,and while we eat lunch (and fend off the roving entrepreneurs), THE SUN COMES OUT!!

Ok, I'm feeling waaaaay better now. We go down and check out the lake in the sun and I finally understand why Pana is so popular with both Guates and other tourists. The lake is incredibly beautiful. It's surrounded by mountains on every side and they are incredibly green. I only wish it had been a less windy day. I had really wanted to take a boat ride, but the water was really rough. Someone had told us that it got like that in the afternoon and we wanted to take a ride in the morning, but, of course, it had BEEN RAINING.

We decide to do a little shopping because I want to pick up somethings for folks back home and I also still wanted to get some more appropriate clothes for me. When the sun came out, it immediately got warmer, so I changed my shirt, but I only had shorts or dresses with me and both seemed too chilly to wear.

The problem with shopping in places like Pana and also in Chichi is that you can't casually browse. As soon as you show the slightest interest in anything, the vendor starts to put the hard sell on you. I get real tired of that, real quick. Aside from the jacket, I only bought a tye-dyed shirt, mostly because it was long sleeve and it fit. If it shrinks any, I'll be finding a friend who might want it. Not only do you have the vendors who have fixed locations giving you a hard sell at any casual interest shown, you have roving capitalists who have a variety of things hanging off them they want to sell you. Textiles, jewelry, little woven dolls. These roving vendors are often young children and when you say no, they come back with "¿por que?", "why not?" or "It is for my school". Yeah, right! You can't sit at an open air restaurant without 3 or 4 or 10 of these vendors approaching you while you eat. More about that in a moment.

One of the things I really hated about Pana was the number of stray, ill-fed, ill-kept dogs running around. It was really heart-breaking. We've seen a few in Antigua but nothing like the number we saw in Pana. And these didn't seem to be pets that were just allowed to run loose, these were poor perros that were obviously not cared for in any way nor fed. Many were showing their ribs. I saw one dog scavaging the remains of someone's chicken dinner, crunching on chicken bones that could very likely kill him later. All the female dogs showed they had given birth, probably multiple times. It was very depressing. Surprisingly, we saw very few cats, but they probably only come out at night.

We heard what were obviously animals running along the roof at the hotel and when I asked what they were, the clerk said probably cats, so I'm sure they are probably in the same condition as the dogs, but more feral, as cats tend to do when not cared for.

On Sunday, we were shuttled to Chichicastenango, which frankly I could have skipped. After the near constant approach of sellers in Pana I was distinctly not in the mood for more shopping. The reason that tourists are taken there is because Chichi has the largest market on Sunday of any town in the region.

oh, boy.

Again, it was confusing when we arrived, as our driver drops us, with our luggage, in front of some huge hotel and tells us to walk back a half block to wait for a blue van at this gas station that will take us back to Antigua. It will be there in 5 minutes. 30 minutes later, this blue van drives by and disappears around the end of a row of buildings. One of our traveling companions goes to check and waves us to come. Sure enough, this is our ride back to Antigua. I'm glad these people were there and figured it out, as I'm not sure whether I would have realized where we had to go. They take our luggage and tell us to be back at 1:45. Great! It is 9:30 now. We've got 4.5 hours to kill and I could care less about shopping at this point.

We walk into the market and it's huge, crowded and noisy. We are immediately assaulted by roving vendors. I realize that these people are just trying to get by and by their standards, we are rich Americans, but after the 1st 10 or 20 or 50 people, I start wanting to yell at them to go away and leave me alone, so I can buy or not. The worst and also, most heartbreaking, are the young shoeshine boys. Apparently, shoeshining is a growth industry and everybody starts at the bottom at 5 years old. No, I don't want my shoes shined, for the 100th time. I don't care if you think they need it. I also don't like the very conflicted emotions all this brings on me. Sadness I can't do more mixed with hostility at the people for annoying the fire out of me with their constant assault on me.

We walked straight into the market until we found a place to get coffee and a snack. Stayed there until we just couldn't stand sitting at the table any longer and then ventured out to walk around for about another hour. For my Deadhead friends, think the largest Shakedown street you've ever seen and then multiply it by 500 and add live animals, fresh meat, hardware and other mundane items and you have an idea of what the market at Chichi was like. For all you others who don't have a clue what I just said, think the largest flea market you've ever gone to and multiply by 100 and add artisan textiles, fresh meat and live animals and you've got the idea.

I couldn't take it any more after an hour, between the assaults by vendors and just the crowds. Despite my going to many Dead shows, I actually hate being in large crowds. I start to get very claustrophobic and have to get OUT. We find a 2nd floor internet cafe and I dash up the stairs and dive into it. It's more expensive than Antigua, Q8/hour verses Q6 here, but I go for it. It's still only about $1/hour. I kill about 1/2 hour there, while Eddie goes back out to wander around. When he comes back, we walk to the other end of this floor and have coffee and beer at this restaurant. Being on the 2nd floor only slightly slows the wandering capitalists down, but anything is a relief. We kill maybe another hour and half, where I have a cheese sandwhich, which is a possible suspect in my recent unpleasantness, and finally leave when boredom and small chairs start to get the better of us.

We go find ice cream and wander back to the vans where we hope to catch an early one leaving. No such luck. We are the last van to leave for Antigua and have another E-ticket ride back home. Although, to his credit, this driver wasn't as bad as the one on Friday. La casa never looked so good. I was so glad to get "home".

For all of you who don't recognize my reference in my title to this piece, that's a line from a Grateful Dead song, Mexicali Blues, by John Perry Barlow. It seemed appropriate.

Ain't No Winners In This Game - pt 5

The Bluff tournament started on time at three the next afternoon. There were many more people that had come to town than would account for the twenty-five players who signed up and could actually show the ten stake required. Some fashioned themselves professional gamblers, some were just gambling on a chance for a change. Most would get a change before the night was over, just not the one they were hoping for.

There were five tables for five players each, set up out back of what passed as Independence’s only excuse for a saloon. When Jack, Suzy and Shannon stuck their heads in that afternoon, Suzy thought to herself that she had pissed in better outhouses.

A group of five might be tricky, Suzy thought. They had been used to playing and had only practiced with four players. She’d just have to be sharp and pick out their tells as quickly as she could. “You know how to do this,” she reminded herself silently. “Just relax and don’t second-guess yourself.”

When they realized it was necessary for Jack and Shannon to not start at the same table, some quick but discreet adjustments needed to be made. It was decided that Suzy would be more help to Jack and Shannon could work on his own. It was a bit riskier that way, but all Shannon had to do was win his table. He thought he would be able to handle all but the four or five that seemed likely to advance; Shannon included Jack in that bunch.

Fortunately, Colonel Ransdall hadn’t thought to ban spectators from crowding around the respective players. This allowed Suzy to stand directly behind Jack’s chair and instead of displaying her finger signals as she held her cards, she pressed them into Jack’s shoulders as he played. When asked by one of the other players at the table if he didn’t find his “girlfriend there” distracting, Jack assured him that his good-luck sister was never a distraction. Jack was a little concerned the fellow might suspect him of cheating after that comment, so the first time it was Jack’s deal he made sure the fellow got the winning hand. Jack felt Suzy’s finger poke him hard when he did that but he knew the fella wasn’t going to have a chance and he wanted him to remember one good hand. The second time it was Jack’s deal, he dealt himself the winning hand after he sent Suzy for a beer, just to assure there would be no petty accusations tossed his way later when he won the table. He got poked in the shoulder for that, as well. Jack easily took his table, but felt no satisfaction. He guessed at least half the men were gambling with money they could ill afford to lose and the look in their eyes when they realized their chance hadn’t paid off pained Jack. It was different taking money from people who could afford it or bastards who deserved to lose it, but Jack and Suzy had always operated on the Robin Hood principle ever since they had both read the story in childhood. They thought of it as an honorable way to be a thief and a liar, if you had need to be a thief and a liar. Take from the rich and give to the poor and worthy.

Only now they were the poor and worthy, but they still always tried to avoid duping those who couldn’t afford it. And now, that’s exactly what they were doing. It felt very wrong to them both.

Shannon had a bit more trouble dispatching his table’s players than he had anticipated, but eventually he finished the game off by giving himself two pair and denying his last opponent the Queen of Diamonds he needed for his straight flush.

There was a supper break until eight after the last table finished around five. Shannon, Jack and Suzy retired to a copse of trees about a mile out of town to take a quick supper of sandwiches made from last night’s catch of rabbit they had roasted. They needed to rethink how to make it plausible for Suzy to switch sides from Jack’s good-luck sister to Shannon’s paramour.

Ain't No Winners In This Game - pt 4

Suzy lay in her bed, thinking about the game. If they could win one and two and there were at least ten players, her and Jack’s share would be about $150. They could leave right away for the West, but ten dollars is a lot of money, especially for a tournament of Bluff that was going to be chock full of professional gamblers, rounders, scoundrels and other ne’er do wells. Suzy and Jack, especially Jack, weren’t really in the same league as some of the folks they’d brushed up against recently. They were just cheating at cards and scamming the more well-off of society to get by and get them a stake, so they could go somewhere out West and settle. What if they lost? They’d be stuck in Independence, Nowhere with less opportunity to get Somewhere.

Suzy tossed and turned all night. By morning, she still didn’t know what she wanted to do. As she got up and wandered into the shared room, Jack was just coming in the door, looking much the worse for wear.

“You look terrible,” Suzy remarked. “Where have you been all night?”

Jack, looking a bit sheepish, shrugged. “Shannon and I went back out after we dropped you off. The plan was to discuss strategy for taking the game, but
after the second bottle of wine, we ended up at Janie’s, sharing another bottle of wine with Velvet and Darla Mae.”

Suzy rolled her eyes. She knew Jack occasionally visited the local whorehouse, but he was usually more discreet. Suzy suspected this new lack of discretion could be blamed on the influence of one Mr. Shannon O’Dell. Suzy was even more uncertain she liked Shannon all that much and felt her qualms about trusting him flare in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, we need to have a talk about this tournament. I really don’t have a good feeling about it nor him, Jack. If we lose, we’ll be right back where we were six months ago and we’ll have less opportunity to recoup our loss in a town the size of Independence. It’s not near big enough to let us play our games, nor are there as many rich pigeons to pluck. Have you thought about what we’ll do if we lose? I mean, really thought about it?”

“Shannon and I talked about it last night, for a long time. I just don’t see how we can lose. Between Shannon and me and you knowing whose bluffing and who’s not, how can we lose? Come on, Suzy! Last fair deal in the city. . . for us.” Jack grinned wickedly.

“You do realize 10 gold dollars is a fair chunk of our savings, Jack. I don’t like the idea of putting it all on one chance for a win. You not only have to get to the final game, you have to win it. And frankly, I’m not sure I trust Shannon O’Dell to not set you up for the fall while he skates away with all the money.”

Jack opened his mouth to protest, but Suzy cut him off. “But, if you want to try for it, I’ll do all I can to help. Heaven knows, you’ve gone along with all my plans since we left Tennessee. We’re going to have to work really hard this week on our signals and such and make sure they’re as subtle as we can make them.”

And so they did.

Afternoons were spent in the common space of Jack and Suzy’s rooms. After a light supper, they rested and prepared themselves for the evening. Shannon still needed to win his stake for the game and Suzy wanted to try and build up their cash reserves, just in case. Before they left for Independence, they agreed to play separately the first three nights and then have two practice nights with the three of them working together, just as they would at the tournament. Suzy wanted to be able to concentrate and was nervous about being able to do so considering how the last time they had all played together had gone.

As it turned out, everything went well for all. Jack and Suzy ended up netting ten dollars. Shannon managed nearly eleven but had a tense moment when another player accused him of “dealing off”. But as it happened, it was early in the game, when Shannon was dealing straight and letting the cards fall as they would. Fortunately, the fellow didn’t try and back up his complaint with his pistol or a knife and another player diffused the situation, so the game went on.

The practice nights were fairly tolerable. They didn’t lose, but between Shannon and Jack together, they ended the night up by only fifty cents. The important thing had been to be clear on what was happening in the game. They had worked out a fairly elaborate set of signals with Suzy as the go-between, posing as Shannon’s buckskin-clad, pistol-packing, magnolia blossom girlfriend. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she’d agreed to go along with any plans they made. They made sure they went to some saloons they had never played before, as they didn’t want to run into anyone who would recognize Suzy, in particular, and wonder why she wasn’t playing. As the game played, Suzy would watch for tells and using her fingers on Shannon she would signal in code what the other players were telling her about the hands they held. It was similar to the finger code she and Jack had developed when they both played. They played the first few hands straight so Suzy would get a feel for who showed what as they played. Jack and Shannon would then start to deal crooked as their turn came around.

It was a little touch and go at the start, but by the second night, they were starting to work as a team. They pretty much evenly split the money from their three pigeons, which amounted to more than eighteen dollars. Since they knew they were heading out the next morning, they had decided ahead of time to clean out whomever they played that night.

They left early the next morning without a word to Miz Boatwright, the owner of the rooming house. Suzy felt bad about that ‘cause Adeline Boatwright had been real good to them and didn’t ask a lot of questions. Suzy left her the ten for next month’s rent and hoped it’d be OK. Shannon scoffed at her concern. “You ain’t never gonna be rich, spending your money to pay for your guilt. No need to feel guilty gulling pigeons.” He laughed at the joke he made.

“Miz Boatwright’s a good woman who works a whole lot harder than any of us,” Suzy retorted hotly. “She’s NOT a pigeon. She’s just trying to get by like all of us and at least, she’s trying to do it honestly. Not by cheating people. So you can just keep right on not feeling guilty about what you do, Mr. O’Dell, but I will always try to help the folks what’s gotten a rough road in this life any way I can, whenever I can.”

They arrived in Independence ten days later and found a farmer outside of town who was willing to let them sleep in his barn for a small fee. The game was to start the next afternoon, so they spent part of the day wandering around the town, such as it was, wondering how the game came to be here of all places. Wherever they went and ask about the game or the town, they kept hearing about Colonel Preston Ransdall, who came out here after the war and opened a supply station to outfit people heading for the Western territories. Business had slowed because of sandbars that kept building up at the steamboat landing. Then the cholera epidemic that hit last year wiped out a large portion of the permanent residents. After that, most folks wanting to head West decided that Westport was a better jumping-off place as it saved eighteen days of travel off the trail and eliminated a river crossing. Colonel Ransdall needed to attract more folks to the area to keep the town viable and he fancied himself a better Bluff player than most that played on the riverboats that used to stop there. He was hoping that folks might decide to stick around after he’d win all their money and they couldn’t afford to leave. He’d laugh big and boisterous after he’d say that. This made some people in the town a little nervous, for some reason when he’d do that, but they weren’t really sure why.

Ain't No Winners In This Game - pt 3

“You’re right. I don’t like that one damn bit. We’ve got a pretty good scheme going here and we’ve been getting along just fine by ourselves. Why you want’en to bring anyone else close in to us?”

“Well, he’s already done that by spying on us for days. It’s either that or we keep looking over our shoulders wondering what he’s gonna pull. ‘Cause I know he’s gonna pull something on us. I can feel it, Jack. And anyway, I was gonna wait till a bit later to bring this up, but we’re gonna have to think about moving on soon, anyway.”

“What’er you talkin’ about? Movin’ on? Movin’ on to where? Why? We gotta a pretty good thing going on here, Sissy, why should we leave?”

Suzy sighed. Sometimes she forgot how naive Jack still was, even with all the conning people out of their money they did every day. Patiently, she explained, “That’s just it, Jack, we’ve about milked this cow dry. We can’t keep working the same areas, even in different guises. We risk one of our former pigeons overhearing us or recognizing us and exposing us. We really need to stop everything but Bluff playing, especially now that Shannon is onto us. We can rely on the Bluff games for a while, but we only cover expenses with those most weeks. If Shannon plays along with us, we’ll have to let him have his share of the pots as well or he may expose us. Now why don’t you run over to his place and invite him to come along with us?”

“Why don’t you?” Jack sulked. He always hated it when his sister was right and he knew she was right about this.

“Now Jack, you know it wouldn’t be proper for me to go running across to Mr. O’Dell’s room. We may be grifters but we can still try to maintain a certain level of respectability, even in our current circumstances. Now go on over and tell Mr. Shannon to stop by about nine o’clock and we’ll walk over to the The Smiling Cat together.”
The evening at the Smiling Cat, while not a total disaster, was not one of Jack or Suzy’s better evenings playing cards. Suzy found herself much more distracted by Shannon and those blue eyes than she would have expected, so she missed her opponent’s tells on several crucial hands. This put more money in the hands of the other players than she and Jack normally allowed.

Jack seemed to be having his own problems tracking the cards being played and without Suzy’s signals at the proper time, he lost some hands he should have won.

Shannon, on the other hand, was having a fine night. He wasn’t as distracted by Suzy as she was by him and he had long ago trained himself to show few tells that his opponents could pick up. That, coupled with the fact that he, also, could deal cards from anywhere in the deck virtually undetected made his evening quite a lucrative one.

Generally, Jack and Suzy would play until midnight or so. But tonight, Suzy called it quits shortly after eleven, when the table took a break. She and Jack normally arrived and left separately, so as to maintain the facade of mere acquaintances. They always agreed before hand where they would meet up when they left and Suzy was waiting in front of the Brickhouse Bar when Jack strolled up with Shannon. Suzy hadn’t expected Shannon to leave the game since he was doing so well, much less come with Jack to meet her. It also surprised her when Shannon offered to buy them a drink as a consolation for their rough evening.

They found an out of the way corner table in the Brickhouse and ordered their drinks. Shannon and Jack both found they had a taste for cheap wine and Suzy surprised Shannon by ordering a glass of their best whiskey straight up. As they drank, the talk turned to the night’s game.

“You both seemed to be a mite upset at how the cards fell tonight,” Shannon said, not offering any hint of his contribution to their problem, “Everybody has an off night now and again.”

“We don’t,” Jack said flatly, “Not how we play.”

Suzy kicked him under the table. She wasn’t ready to be sharing their particular Bluff strategies with Shannon quite yet, but it looked like she wasn’t being given any choice in the matter, as Jack went on.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d be dealin’ crooked? I woulda worked with ya, if I’d a’known you were pullin’ ‘em out at your leisure. It took me most the night to figure out it was you that was messin’ me up.”

Shannon was taken aback. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had caught onto how he was dealing. He’d gotten caught quite a bit at first, of course, until he had practiced on his fellow deck hands and refined his technique but that had been back before the war when he was working deckhand on various riverboats up and down the Mississippi, watching the gamblers at night.

“Well. . .uh. . .I. . .I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack,” Shannon said , trying to bluff his way out of it.

“Oh, come on, now, Shannon,” Jack cajoled. “I could tell, once I started looking for it. Back when ol' Henry was teaching Suzy and me to play, he also taught us how to spot cheaters. You was dealing them cards from the top, bottom and middle.”

Shannon had the good grace to blush lightly. “Well, why didn’t you turn me in? I was winning and you weren’t.”

“You came in on my introduction, Shannon. It wouldn’t looked too good, if I’d called you out after bringing you in. Them fellers would’ve beat the hell outta both of us, if we were lucky. Besides, why didn’t you turn me and Suzy in after you realized what we were up to?”

“I have no love for lawmen. Most of ‘em are dirtier than the folks they’re locking up. I have to say, I was impressed that two kids that had grown up with everything being done for them had adapted so well to life on the shadier side of the street. What made you stray from the good path?”

“We got some experience on the shadier side, as you call it, before the war,” Suzy cut in. “We were helping slaves escape North whenever we could. Jack and I didn’t abide keeping and owing other human beings. It didn’t seem right, seeing as how this country was founded on the principle that all men were supposed to be created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Once I got old enough and figured out what was going on, I decided to do what I could to see that those that wanted to flee had the opportunity. Jack made the same decision as me when he got to be of an age, as well. So we learned to lie and sneak around in service of others. We decided it was time

to lie and sneak in service of ourselves for a change. ‘Specially since we don’t have what you’d call any useful skills.”
“But you owned slaves,” Shannon replied. “How’d you reconcile that?”

“Those were are Daddy’s slaves, not ours,” Suzy explained. “We had no choice about that. But we treated everyone with respect and when we could, we helped more than a few disappear. Daddy was always fuming about his ‘ungrateful’ slaves running off from him, but we were very careful. Not only did nobody we helped ever get caught, but nobody, not even Daddy, suspected it was us that was helping,” she finished with a laugh.

“So who was this ole Henry that taught y’all to play cards and catch cheaters?”

“Oh, that was Daddy’s old waiting man and our mammy’s husband. He started off just showing us how to play to keep us amused, but we both kinda showed a talent for it, so’s he started teaching us more serious like when we got a little older. I seem to have a knack for catching people in a bluff or know when they’re holding a pretty good hand. Jack here has learned how to shuffle and deal pretty much any card he wants out of the deck. Between the two of us, we’ve managed to sort out some signals for each other that improve our chances of winning the hand.”

“I see,” Shannon said thoughtfully, scratching his chin, “I was debating whether I was gonna say anything to the both of you about this, but I reckon I will. I think if we work together, we could take it all.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked.

“The reason I got off in St. Louis and quit the riverboat gambling is to go and try my hand at this here big Bluff tournament in Independence, Kansas. Grand prize is a hundred gold dollars plus winner take all. Cost ten gold to buy in. I was gonna win my stake here in St. Louis before I head out. We’ll need to leave in five days if we want to make it in time.”

“I’m in,” Jack said immediately. “We’ll need to work out our signals with each other, so we can nail it. Are there other prizes?”

“Second spot gets fifty dollars. And of course, depending on the number of players, the winner gets the pot. Not a bad return on your money.”

“We’ll have to talk about it. Twenty is almost half of what we’ve saved to head west on,” Suzy said.

“Uh, well. . . yeah. . .about that. . .You’ll only need to come up with ten. Apparently, the man that’s running the thing got a problem with women playing cards. He don’t mind ‘em hanging about with their men and such, but he ain’t allowing no women nor coloreds to buy into the game.”

Suzy looked away annoyed. She had been ready to cast her lot in with Shannon to see if they could sweep the game, but not being allowed to play made her want to skip it. She had gotten pretty used to being able to do as she pleased. Jack was willing to follow her lead on most things and they didn’t have anyone else trying to run their life for a change. Having someone tell her she couldn’t do something because she was a woman had always chafed and her new-found freedom had only increased that feeling.

“I’m sorry, Suzy,” Jack said softly. “I know hearing that makes you angry, but you would still be able to hang around the table and signal me and Shannon. It might even work better, ‘cause you could concentrate on the looking and not worry about the playing. Whatta you say, Sissy? Come on and do it with us.”

“I’m going to have to think about this,” Suzy said slowly. “We’ll talk again in the morning. Right now, I’m tired. Would you two gentlemen mind to walk me home?”

Ain't no Winners in This Game - pt 2

Shannon had been watching the fair and beautiful Suzy for several days. He first ran across her and her companion as they collected for Civil War widows and orphans as he arrived off a riverboat up from Memphis. He was initially drawn in by her familiarity but couldn’t place where he had seen her before. He hung around the waterfront, discreetly mingling with the bustling crowd, until Suzy and the man with her packed it up for the day. He followed them at a safe distance as they made their way across St. Louis to a more worn-out area than their clothing would have suggested they lived. He watched as they entered a large, ramshackle house and waited until he saw lanterns lit in the upstairs rooms. He then strode across the street to inquire about the room they had for rent.
After following Suzy and Jack around St. Louis for several days watching them operate their different swindles on the unsuspecting populace, he finally saw Suzy without any of her disguises. It instantly clicked, she was the young woman from the farm his regiment had spent two days camped near sometime in the second year of the war. He remembered a young boy there, too, and wondered if the young man with her was the same boy.

He also remembered playing a little Bluff with her, the boy and some of the other men from his regiment. He and the other men got quite tight on some homemade whiskey the girl had brought out. After that things got real fuzzy. He does remember, however, that for the next several days after they left the farm things went very badly for them. It was as if those damn bluecoats had known exactly where they were and what they were going to do. He wondered if somehow the girl had been involved in that. But that was over and done with. Now, he just wanted to figure out if he could somehow turn some of their rackets to his benefit. He also needed to remember her name.

For several days, Suzy had noticed the same man hanging around wherever she and Jack ended up working that day’s game. It was beginning to unnerve her, not only because she was constantly seeing him, but she had the feeling that she knew him from somewhere. It was his eyes. He had the bluest eyes she had ever seen and she was sure she had seen them somewhere before. One afternoon as they were winding up that day’s work in peddling fake mining shares, she asked Jack, “Have you noticed that feller over there, Jack? I’ve seen him hanging ‘round now for several days. Do you recognize him?”



Jack looked in Shannon’s direction and squinted, “Yeah, I’ve noticed him, too. He’s starting to make me a little nervous. Hope he’s not the law. But, naw, he don’t look familiar to me. Uh-oh, here he comes.”

Shannon, realizing his stalking had finally been noticed, sauntered over to Jack and Suzy. He still couldn’t remember their names but he had recalled that their daddy had been referred to as “Massa Clay” by the old colored man that had still been living on the farm. “Miss Clay, Mr. Clay,” he said, taking a chance that it was the brother, “what a surprise to run into you here. I’m sure you were wondering who I was just hanging around for several days, but I was only trying to remember where I knew you from and your names. I only just this moment, recalled the where and the who. Since I know no one in St. Louis, I was hoping to introduce myself to some familiar faces. My name is Shannon O’Dell. My regiment stayed near your farm during the war and you and your father were most kind to all of us. How is your father?”

Suzy, who had been prepared to assert that he was mistaken, suddenly remembered the face surrounding those blue eyes. She remembered him through the firelight as they had played Bluff that night. He always seemed to be staring at her whenever she looked his way. Staring intently, that is, until the liquor started to take effect and those blue eyes started to glaze. Between the whiskey and the infusion of Mammy’s hemp resin tea that Suzy added to the whiskey, the men playing cards became very relaxed and talkative. With proper, yet subtle, questioning and deference on Suzy’s part, she managed to draw out the entire regiment’s movements and plans for the next several weeks. That had ended up getting the farm some much needed food and supplies from the Union regiment that came through only a few days later.

So she guessed she’d better own up and she and Jack could sort out later what the implications of Shannon’s arrival on the scene might be. “Well, how do you do, Mr. O’Dell, surrah? I do remember you at our farm. That was a fine game of Bluff we played that evening. Do you remember my brother, Jack?”

“I wondered if this was the young lad all growed up. . .and please, call me Shannon. I must confess, however, that I have forgotten your first name.”

“It was Suzanna, but I go by Suzy now. And I’m using my mother’s name now,
Prescott. Jack is now Jack Straw. When we decided to leave everything behind, that included the Clay family name.”

“I imagine yer Daddy wern’t pleased to hear that.”

“Our father was killed by a Union soldier not too long after your regiment passed through,” Suzy replied.

“My condolences, Miss Clay, um, uh, Miss Prescott. How difficult that must have made everything for you.”

“We managed to get by, but after the war ended, we didn’t really feel like staying in the area. It took us a while to plan it, but we decided to come to St. Louis and see if we wanted to stay here or move on west. We really need to be getting back to our room now to freshen up for the evening. It was nice to make your acquaintance again, Mr. O’Dell. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again.” Suzy said, not with complete dread.


“Oh, I’ll just walk along with y’all. It just so happens while I was trying to figure out where I knew you from, I followed you back to your rooms and happened upon the house across the street with a room they were willing to let to me. Very fortunate, I’d say.”

A little too fortunate, Suzy thought nervously.

Later, in their rooms, Suzy and Jack discussed this disquieting turn of events.

“It was bound to happen,” Jack said. “Somebody who recognized one of us was bound to come through St. Louis sooner or later. I’m just glad it wasn’t one of them righteous Manchester busybodies who’d want to ask all kinds of questions about what we were doing here.”

Suzy frowned. “Not that I’m complaining, but don’t you think it odd, that Shannon followed us around for three or four days and never turned us in to the law. He didn’t hide himself to us when we was working our marks, but I sure didn’t notice him when he followed us. He had to know we were pulling scams right from the start. He saw us in our disguises. That worries me mightly. He’s up to something. We need to watch him very carefully. And,” she paused, “you’re not going to like this, but I think the best way to keep an eye on him is to invite him to join us tonight at the card game. We need to get to know Mr. O’Dell a little better.”

“You’re right. I don’t like that one damn bit. We’ve got a pretty good scheme going here and we’ve been getting along just fine by ourselves. Why you want’en to bring anyone else close in to us?”

“Well, he’s already done that by spying on us for days. It’s either that or we keep looking over our shoulders wondering what he’s gonna pull. ‘Cause I know he’s gonna pull something on us. I can feel it, Jack. And anyway, I was gonna wait till a bit later to bring this up, but we’re gonna have to think about moving on soon, anyway.”

“What’er you talkin’ about? Movin’ on? Movin’ on to where? Why? We gotta a pretty good thing going on here, Sissy, why should we leave?”

Suzy sighed. Sometimes she forgot how naive Jack still was, even with all the conning people out of their money they did every day. Patiently, she explained, “That’s just it, Jack, we’ve about milked this cow dry. We can’t keep working the same areas, even in different guises. We risk one of our former pigeons overhearing us or recognizing us and exposing us. We really need to stop everything but Bluff playing, especially now that Shannon is onto us. We can rely on the Bluff games for a while, but we only cover expenses with those most weeks. If Shannon plays along with us, we’ll have to let him have his share of the pots as well or he may expose us. Now why don’t you run over to his place and invite him to come along with us?”

“Why don’t you?” Jack sulked. He always hated it when his sister was right and he knew she was right about this.

“Now Jack, you know it wouldn’t be proper for me to go running across to Mr. O’Dell’s room. We may be grifters but we can still try to maintain a certain level of respectability, even in our current circumstances. Now go on over and tell Mr. Shannon to stop by about nine o’clock and we’ll walk over to the The Smiling Cat together.”

Ain't No Winners in this Game - part 1

Suzanna Prescott Clay couldn’t sleep. At least, the woman who used to be Suzanna Clay couldn’t sleep.

She was Suzy Prescott now, she had to remind herself. She and her brother, who lay snoring gently beside her in the loft of the barn, had decided to change their names almost immediately after they left Manchester, Tennessee that morning. As they left the familiar land where they had lived all their lives, her brother, Jackson Lee Clay, suddenly announced, “Suzanna, everything is changing. We need to change our names, too. I think, from now on, my name’s Jack Straw.”

While the area and most of it’s people were nothing to them now, Suzanna was unwilling to sever every tie and so, to honor their dead mother, Suzanna Clay became plain Suzy Prescott.

They decided to leave Manchester after it came out they had been secret abolitionists helping local slaves escape to the North before the war. They might have been able to stick around in the community until people forgot that fact but the other thing that became known around the same time they weren’t sure they could survive, literally. That was the fact that they had assisted the Union forces against the Confederacy during the Recent Unpleasantness.

Suzy suspected it was more than coincidence that both of these secrets came to light about the same time that she had finally, and at the point of a gun, desuaded Virgil Cooper of the idea that she was going to be his wife. She had no idea how he’d managed to find out about the latter, but he might very well have put two and two together and figured out the former. After all, Suzy had helped many of Virgil’s slaves escape over the years.

Unbeknownst to Suzy, her and Jack’s daddy had promised her to Virgil before he joined the Confederate army. Once he returned and tried to collect his bride, he was quite put out that Suzy refused to have anything to do with him. At first, she politely tried to ignore him, but Virgil was never a man to take to being ignored. He eventually got so worked up over Suzy refusing his attentions, he tried to take her to his place by force. That’s when Suzy had to convince Virgil once and for all that he needed to get that idea out of his head. He swore he’d make her sorry she’d refused him. And now they were forced to leave the only home they had ever known, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how upset she was.

Suzy had known Virgil since they were children and had always disliked him. He had always been arrogant and rude to anyone he felt was beneath him and that included Suzy and Jack. He was a cruel child and grew up to be a cruel master to his slaves. He treated them worse than his animals and that wasn’t saying much. Unfortunately, even though he acted scornful and superior toward Suzy, he had also fancied her from the time they were young adolescents. Suzy could only imagine why her daddy had promised her hand to him. except that William Clay probably saw something in it for himself and had never cared what Suzy thought, but Daddy was dead now and there was no way Suzy was going to become that insufferable prick’s wife.

In some ways it did not surprise Suzy that her daddy had done to her what he did. He had always liked Virgil and, unlike most, Virgil had never shown William Clay anything but respect. It was also true Daddy Clay could be as arrogant as any man alive. In fact, his arrogance had finally gotten him killed when he refused to give his best Tennessee Walker to a Union officer whose horse had

gone lame. The officer shot William Clay, apologized to Suzy and Jack, but took the horse anyway.

Admittedly, Suzy and Jack were more shocked than sad at the death of their father. William Clay treated his slaves humanely but still thought of them as property. He only treated Suzy and Jack marginally better and thought of them as his property as well. He believed completely in the succession and had he not been too old when the war started, he would have joined up.

As soon as Daddy Clay was in the ground with Suzy and Jack named as heirs to all the property, they gave all the slaves still on the farm their freedom. Even with that, all their older slaves chose to stay with Jack and Suzy. With ol' Massa Clay gone, they knew Suzy and Jack would treat them well and keep them safe from those who would resent their freedom. The few young men that Suzy hadn’t already helped escape decided to go North and try and join the Union forces.

Suzy and Jack, once he was old enough to be trusted, had, for a number of years, helped any slave in the area who wanted to, to run away. No one ever suspected anything because of the Clay family’s prominence in the community of Manchester.

Once the news got out about the Underground Railroad work and the spying, Jack and Suzy decided pretty quickly to leave. The last piece of business they had to attend to was signing over all two-hundred acres of their farm to their mammy and her husband, Henry, who had been slaves of their daddy since they were young. That was the final slap in the face to all the fine, upstanding citizens of Manchester that were now treating Jack and Suzy like so much manure on their shoe. It gave them both a particularly satisfied feeling to do that for Mammy and Henry and do it to their former friends and neighbors.

Suzy suggested Henry and Mammy, whose name she finally learned was Hannah, ask some of the newly freed slave families to come and live on the land and sharecrop. It would help Henry and Mammy manage the land and also provide for a number of people to be around in case their was trouble. And Suzy warned Henry as they left to expect trouble.

Suzy lay in the dark of the barn and smelled the sweet straw as she thought about all that had transpired over the last year. She wondered where she and Jack should go now and what they should do. She finally fell asleep with all this on her mind and it seemed like no time before Jack was shaking her awake.

“The cows are starting to stir around, Suzy. I think it might be getting toward daylight.”

Sure enough, when they peeked out the barn window, there was the faintest glow in the East. Fortunately, no light shown at the house yet. They quietly saddled their horses, filled a bag they found with sweet oats for the horses’ breakfast later and walked off, leading their horses toward the road they had been on last night.

After they had been riding for an hour or so, they found a quiet place in the trees where a stream passed through. There they stopped to let the horses rest and feed while they ate some of the delicious biscuits and jam that was part of the huge hamper of food Mammy prepared for them. They tried to tell her she needed to hang onto as much food as she could until the crops started to come in later in the summer, but Mammy wouldn’t hear of letting Jack and Suzy go off into the unknown without knowing how they would eat.

Suzy finally brought up the subject that had been dwelling in her mind since they got free of Manchester, “Where we gonna go, Jack? What’re we going to do? Our $300 will hold us for awhile but we need a plan.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that, Suzy. I think we should go to St. Louis. It’ll take us a while to get there but I think we could earn us some money, save up and head out West.”

“How, Jack? You and I don’t have any real skills. I suspect our Southern gentility and manners won’t exactly be in high demand as job skills go.”

“Depends on what you’re talking about, Suzy. I didn’t say it had to be honest money. Look, you and I have been deceptive and sly since we were in our teens in the service of other people and causes we believed in. I think it’s about time we put some of that deceit and guile to work for our ownselves. It’ll take two and half, three weeks to get there. We’ll have plenty of time to come up with a plan.”

The three weeks it took Jack and Suzy to reach St. Louis passed quickly. Suzy remembered it as the last innocent period of both their lives, despite the occasional egg stealing and barn loft trespassing to escape the rain. Mostly, they slept out under the stars, taking time to hunt for dinner when they found a suitable spot and talked about the different ways they might go about supporting themselves when they reached St. Louis.

They agreed they should use several different means to separate people from their money. The primary way would, of course, be a widely played card game called Bluff, or as it was starting to be known; poker. Suzy and Jack learned how to play Bluff from Henry when they were young. They rapidly improved their skill with the game and used it as a means to gain information from the Grays and to barter that information for resources they needed from the Blues.

They became quite adept at both winning and losing when it served their purposes.

Once arrived in St. Louis, they quickly found an inexpensive set of rooms in an undistinguished part of town and started to work. One day they might set up at a busy corner in a well-to-do section of town and collect money for Civil War widows and orphans. The next day, Suzy would pose as the sister of a gold miner who had hit a rich vein, but needed cash in order to stake the claim and start mining operations. This was their most successful bit, as everyone wanted a chance to get in on the opportunity to own shares in a gold mine. They even had shares printed up, along with a fake map to the fake mine location. They didn't need to do this one too often, as it often netted them a month's worth of expense money for just one or two days work. That suited Suzy just fine. She thought it was too easy and found no challenge in the deception.

Along with the different frauds they were employing, they also started using a variety of identities and costuming. This made it much easier to work the same areas time and time again. Suzy liked being able to dress up and play different parts. Sometimes it was such a relief to be someone other than herself.


They played Bluff in various card parlors and saloons two or three times a week. At first, this was uncomfortable for Suzy. As a proper Southern lady, she had never ventured into one of these places, but as she kept telling herself, “You have done all sorts of things you never thought you could, this is just one more thing and it's for your survival this time.”

In playing Bluff, they each had their own strengths. Jack was excellent at being able to shuffle and deal any cards he wanted from the deck. When he was feeling full of himself, he would boast, “I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines.” Suzy, on the other hand, could tell who was bluffing and who was holding a winning hand as if they were showing her their cards. They had also learned and agreed on certain subtle signals to pass each other information. They played carefully, each slowly building their bank, but not winning so often it raised suspicion. It was all going very well.

Until Shannon O'Dell came into their life.

The Fugitive in American Culture - Intro

Like so much in my life, the Grateful Dead defined this project for me. It came from my deep love for their music and from my identity as a Deadhead. The idea to write back stories based on the lyrics of their music came to me almost fully developed shortly after the assignment was made.

Just as a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, I wanted to choose three songs to represent the beginning, middle and end of my story cycle.

Considering the conventional fugitive motif of someone running to escape, two songs from the Dead’s repertoire were immediately obvious, while the third one took some deliberation before being decided upon.

The clear choices were Jack Straw and Friend of the Devil. Both of these songs have distinct fugitive themes written around the idea of escape.

Jack Straw has two characters, who are traveling together. One, Shannon, is obviously the bad guy. We don’t know much about Jack’s moral character, except he’s not very happy about the actions of his traveling partner. The song is full of ambiguity. We don’t know why they are traveling together. We don’t know what score Shannon wants to go to Tulsa to even. We don’t know why he hides under cover of darkness. The song continues the ambiguity to the end. Does Jack cut his buddy down, as in kill him, or does he cut him down after he is killed? The story I chose to write answers some of these questions and raises a few more. In particular, I leave open the question of what Jack does and where he goes after he buries Shannon but before he shows up in Reno at the start of the third story.

Friend of the Devil is also a song full of ambiguity. We don’t really know why the character is being chased by the sheriff and twenty hounds. We don’t know much about the character at all, except the name of the woman he loves and that there were at least two other women in his past. One of whom has possibly had his child. In the story I chose to write, we know why he is being chased, but nothing else is made any clearer about the lost time between the end of the second story and the beginning of the third. It does, however, clear up and create an additional mystery lingering from the first story, which is the fate of his sister, Suzy.

The choice of the third song was a more difficult decision. Several good candidates were considered and discarded. In the end, I decided to go with Loser. While there is no obvious fugitive theme, the strong ambiguity of it is the tie that links it thematically to the other two songs.

This song is obviously about someone trying to wheedle a stake out of a woman named Suzy, so he or she can gamble with it, sure they will win at the game this time. Perhaps they have done well in the past. Perhaps they are overconfident of their true ability to win. In the end, we are left to wonder whether the person wins or loses. This song was open ended enough to develop a story that could be about anything as long as gambling was the theme.

I created the fugitive theme in this story by having the main characters work for the Underground Railroad and spy for the Union during the war. When the story opens, the war has ended, their activities have been revealed and they feel it’s no longer safe for them to continue to live in the community in which they grew up. So, they become fugitives running from their past.

Choosing which order to present the songs and their stories was also a difficult decision, because at this point I wasn’t sure about what I was going to write. Eventually, I decided that Friend of the Devil seemed to have more of an air of finality to it than the other two, while Loser, with it’s more wide-open
interpretation could serve as the beginning song for the stories as well as a natural lead-in to Jack Straw.

From the beginning, I knew that Jack from the song Jack Straw would be the character I would carry through the three stories. I felt the ambiguity of his role in the song allowed me a lot of flexibility to write his character.

I attempted to highlight the ambiguity in these songs within the stories because I think that ambiguity is a strong theme that runs through any fugitive tale. In the case of fugitive slaves, for instance, ambiguity defined their existence. Slaves were sold off away from their families or ran away. In either case, often never heard from again. If they worked for an erratic owner, they might not know from day to day whether their actions would cause them to be threatened, shipped or sold.

A fugitive of any sort has a measure of ambiguity in their lives. If they are doing something illegal or are on the run, will they be caught? Who can they trust? If they are simply living outside of the norms of the dominant culture, will they be allowed to live in peace or will they be harassed by other members of society? Who is it safe to confide in? Who can they turn to for help?

The use of gambling as a leitmotif throughout the stories also gave me another type of fugitive theme to work with - that of gamblers being outside the usual norms and values of the rest of society. It also serves to show that people are often not what they seem and a fugitive can be anyone and anyone can become a fugitive under the right circumstances.


A minor device I employed , unrelated to the fugitive theme, was the use of ten gold dollars and the twenty dollar bill to represent good and bad. Because money is mentioned in each of these songs, I decided at some point in the writing process to use the money as a symbol throughout all the stories. Ten gold dollars is always handled by Suzy, and is used in a positive or, at least, neutral way, while twenty dollars, especially a twenty dollar bill, is used by Shannon, usually giving it to Jack. The scene at the end of the first story where Jack takes the twenty from Shannon and gives it to Suzy serves as a metaphor to sever the essential goodness of Jack and the tie between Jack and Suzy, in order to taint Jack with, and tie him to, Shannon’s corrupt nature. The use of twenty’s also serves to set Shannon up to represent the devil in the last story, while establishing Jack as the friend of the devil.